Under Nina Tassler's leadership, CBS finished the 2011-2012 season as "America's Most-Watched Network" for the ninth time in the last 10 years. / Sonja Flemming, CBS

by Gary Levin, USA TODAY

by Gary Levin, USA TODAY

CBS , already the most popular network, is about to go into ratings overdrive, with football's AFC championship, the Super Bowl and the Grammy Awards all airing in prime time in the next month.

NCIS is TV's top show, and The Big Bang Theory hit another series high this week with 20 million viewers. "The ubiquity in syndication has certainly helped" expose the show to new viewers, says CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler.

CBS will win its 10th season in 11 years. But it also has a strong chance of winning among young adults, the key audience for advertisers, aided by sports and sharp declines at perennial young-adult winner Fox. (This season, Big Bang also has eclipsed ABC's Modern Family among that crowd.)

Tassler is also planning the network's "most aggressive" summer, with a 13-episode adaptation of Stephen King's Under the Dome, which, like The Simpsons Movie, involves a giant dome enveloping a small town, with calamitous results. It's due June 24, and in success could return.

An expanded season of Big Brother will arrive earlier than usual, on June 26, and Unforgettable, the cancelled-then-resurrected series starring Poppy Montgomery, will return July 28.

Since it hasn't developed new comedy hits, CBS wants its aging but still popular duo Two and a Half Men and How I Met Your Mother back for new seasons. Negotiations for Mother are "almost done," but Men needs to sign a new deal with star Ashton Kutcher, who replaced Charlie Sheen.

And despite young Angus T. Jones' videotaped rant, calling the show "filth" and urging viewers to stop watching, "we'd like him to be part of that next year," Tassler says. "He made his public apology and has moved on."